Prescription

A few days ago my doctor gave me a prescription, I have been battling an infection, and this was my second round of antibiotics to get me back on track. The directions on the bottle were very confusing, they went something like this:

Take this medication 1 hour before you eat, or two hours after

It sounds so simple, but in reality, it is driving me nuts. I tried the one hour before and whatever this stuff is, it makes me feel like launching what I have not even eaten yet out of my stomach. When two hours after I eat hits, I have moved on and have completely forgotten to take this medicine. The best part is that I must take this medicine for ten days, right now I have seven days left and I hope I get the hang of this pretty soon. I want to be healthy, but I think this medicine is testing my mental agility while simultaneously healing my infection.

How many times in your life have you been given an instruction that made no sense, but you had to comply? When I recently had my surgery, the nurse at the hospital came into the room I was in to prepare me for surgery and piled some surgical clothing on the bed and said "Why don't you step down the hall and empty your bladder one last time" so I promptly complied. When I returned to the room, I sat for some time waiting for the nurse to return for my next instruction. When she finally came back, she snapped at me "You need to put these garments on!" Apparently, I was supposed to figure that out from how she piled the garments on the end of the bed, but I did not understand the nonverbal instruction she had given. Here I was trying to be a good patient and follow the instructions and totally blew it. I seriously hope that is the worst thing that happened to the nurse that day.

Every day we are bombarded with letters and emails and even media telling us their prescription for what to do, when to do it and how to do it, at some point a person's instruction threshold ends up on over load. How can you possibly keep up with it all? At some point failure is very likely. If you add to this the papers that must be filled out and cash required during each school year plus the added pressure of making sure that everyone in the household is alive and accounted for you have no room for error. I had to hang a giant calendar on the side of my refrigerator just so that I can keep track of some of the daily life prescriptions I receive. Quite honestly I am the only one in my household that writes on the darn thing though.

This brings up another issue all together, and that is that in families we Mom's are really the information technicians. We know everyone's schedule and we work hard to keep everyone on those schedules. Is it any wonder then that when it comes time to following a simple (or complex) direction, we stumble? I cannot allow this attempt to confuse me with a ridiculous prescription to throw me off the track of being healthy. I need to get back on my feet, there is a lot on my calendar and I do not have time to be sorting out something as simple as when to take a pill. I guess I will just have to suck it up and follow the prescription as best I can.